


you make me live (you're my best friend)

by MomentsOfWeakness



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/F, not canon compliant after season three
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 16:24:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6016354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MomentsOfWeakness/pseuds/MomentsOfWeakness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Lydia was six she had a best friend; her name was Stacy and she was perfect. She was the first, but she wouldn't be the last one to change Lydia's life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you make me live (you're my best friend)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [piratekelly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/piratekelly/gifts).



You're the best friend  
That I ever had  
I've been with you such a long time  
You're my sunshine  
And I want you to know  
That my feelings are true  
I really love you  
You're my best friend

When Lydia was six she had a best friend. Her name was Stacy and she was perfect; she was a hundred and thirteen years old, had purple hair, and was eight inches tall. She was most certainly imaginary.

Lydia knew she was imaginary, but that’s what made her so perfect. Stacy was exactly what Lydia wanted her to be. She loved Lydia’s clothes, she played whatever games Lydia wanted to play, and when Lydia told her over tea (real tea, with sugar and milk, Lydia wouldn’t abide by fake tea in her purple flowered, porcelain tea set) that she wanted to be a scientist like the man who had come to their class and shown them his lab coat and security badge…well, Stacy didn’t laugh like Lydia’s dad did.

Lydia’s mom didn’t like Stacy. She was worried that Lydia spent too much time alone, and not enough time with other kids her age.

“Don’t you want to have a slumber party, like the other girls do?” Lydia’s mother had asked over dinner one night, as Lydia carefully placed tiny portions of her chicken and green beans onto a napkin next to her plate. Just because Stacy was imaginary doesn’t mean that she didn’t need to eat.

Lydia had glanced at her father’s seat at the head of the table, empty again; mom said he was at work but the wrinkles at her eyes told Lydia she wasn’t telling the truth. “The other girls always try to touch my stuff,” Lydia said, scraping a scoop of mashed potatoes onto the napkin. Stacy doesn’t touch anything; not for real.

“Honey, you have to learn to share,” Lydia’s mother had sighed, poking at her own meal, glass of wine empty except for a spot of red at the bottom.

It’s not that Lydia didn’t want to share, it’s just that she liked her toys a certain way, and the other girls didn’t know the way. That’s why Stacy was perfect. She knew everything.

When dad left, Stacy did too. Lydia overheard Dr. Ramirez say that usually it was the other way around; that children normally made imaginary friends to fill in the holes. They didn’t usually make bigger ones.

But Lydia knew that Stacy wasn’t really gone, because she had always known that Stacy wasn’t really there. When Lydia played on the playground at school now she brought her dolls and only got a little mad when the other girls put them in the wrong clothes.

\---

When Lydia was sixteen she had a best friend. Her name was Allison and she was perfect because she wasn’t perfect. She dated the most horrible boy, hardly ever did what Lydia wanted, and she got into the worst kinds of trouble.

Not the detention kind of trouble, not the grounded and have to sneak out to go to the party kind of trouble. No, Allison got into the kind of trouble that caused nightmares; that caused scars.

Lydia loved her anyway. Allison turned her world upside down, upset every perfect thing in Lydia’s life and turned it into broken glass, but she still followed her into every danger, into fairy stories drenched in blood. 

She followed Allison into a few precious moments of goodness too. There were shopping trips and dances, nights spent in their rooms, swapping clothes and talking about the dumb shit their boyfriends did. It stopped being funny when one of them grew a tail and tried to kill them all. (There were boys after that, Stiles almost, and then Aiden who was fun but was never meant for more than that. She tries not to think of him now.)

When things got dangerous there were days in the forest, Allison’s arms guiding hers as she shot arrow after arrow at targets on the trees. She never used the bow, never even touched it outside of their practice sessions, but it made Allison feel better to know she could.

Throughout everything, through the darkness and fear and blood, through all the different boys, through trying to keep her grades up and trying to be a real girl and not a ghost, there was always Allison.

She was strong and good, and Lydia had never met anyone like her before. Lydia loved her. She loved her like she had never loved anyone. She loved her like she was the sun, and Lydia was a flower, waiting to bloom after the cold of winter.

She watched her one night, asleep in her bed, curled around herself with a knife under the pillow. It was Lydia’s knife; Allison’s bow was under the bed, a bag of Wolfsbane on the bureau. Lydia watched her and wondered if she would change it. If she would trade the scars, the fear and sleepless nights, the nightmares and the wailing, for a world that was like it was before Allison came to Beacon Hills.

She held onto the sun that night, one hand wrapped in Allison’s and the other around her knife, and stopped wondering.

(Years later, when she dreamed of Allison, the wailing in the background always covered up the sound of her voice.)

\---

When Lydia was twenty-six she had a best friend. Her name was Priya and there had never been another person so beautiful or so kind. Sometimes Lydia wonders why Priya likes her at all. She’s…scarred.

She’s not broken anymore. Hasn’t been for a while, since she moved out of Beacon Hills and went far far away. She had tried to make it in New York; gone to school, graduated top of her class and had three job offers before the ink on her degree was dry.

But when the ragged little werewolf had shown up on her doorstep, backpack thrown over her shoulder and her voice scared when she whispered ‘Scott said you might be able to help me’, Lydia realized it wasn’t far enough. She helped her of course, the sad little thing. (Allison had taught her a lot of things, but the one Lydia worked to remember every day was ‘protect those who can’t protect themselves’.)

She got the girl situated into a local pack and quickly accepted the offer from the lab in London. Halfway across the world just might be enough.

She had a small flat, a coffee shop down the street that got her order right every time, and was managing a new research project before she reached 25. When her and her coworkers went out to celebrate she met Priya.

Her big brown eyes reminded Lydia of Allison, but it was the way she stood up to two-hundred and fifty pounds of drunken German that really drew Lydia in, a moth to the flame. Dressed in a tiny red dress that was scandalously short Priya had stepped between the man and a frightened young girl at the bar with all the confidence of…well, a supernatural creature that knew there was nothing to fear.

It took months for Lydia to finally realize that Priya’s skills really did come from her military training and not from…other things. It was months after that before Lydia told Priya why she woke up screaming some nights; why she was afraid of the dark (it wasn’t the dark she feared, but the things that hid inside it).

Lydia told her about werewolves and kanima. She told her about her highschool love that had been a monster and the one that had died so young, told her about the way she wailed when she drove too close to the hospital. She had been expecting it when Priya left, walked out the door without a word; it seemed to be a theme with her, people leaving her behind.

But when Priya came back it felt like the last of the wounds given to her so long ago had finally closed up.

Now Lydia was standing at the end of a long aisle, white dress trailing behind her, and her best friend was waiting for her at the other end.

Lydia’s scars are ugly. Her skin is flawless of course, but she seems them anyway, every day when she looks in the mirror. But when she stops next to the alter and see’s Priya in her dress blue’s standing beside her she feels like the most beautiful person on earth.

\---

When Lydia is forty-six she has a best friend. Her name is Allison and she is the most precious creature Lydia has ever seen. She is six years old and she has big brown eyes and soft brown skin just like her mummy. She is tough and opinionated, and Priya says she gets that from her mom.

She is perfect. (So perfect that when she was three weeks old Lydia had flown Scott and Kira out to London to make sure she wasn’t a changling. Scott had laughed while he cuddled Allison, his smile soft when she gripped his finger tight, but Kira had given her a look that said she understood completely.)

They have tea parties together, little tutu’s and tiny porcelain cups. She has her dolls and teddy bears lined up in perfect little rows and when her friends come over she tries not to be fussy. 

One day Allison comes home with a best friend of her own. His name is Brandubh (no, mom, you spell it like this, she said as she took the pink crayon away from Lydia and scrawled the name across a new piece of white paper). His name means ‘black raven’ and he is imaginary. Or…so they thought.

When Allison disappeared Lydia called in the cavalry. Priya begged her to just call the police, to let the authorities handle it, but she knew better. There was nothing they could do with flashing sirens and guns.

Within twelve hours they were all there, even Derek, dragged along at Stiles’ heels, and running through the forest looking for the fairy ring Allison and Priya has stumbled through while on a picnic last month. Priya hadn’t placed the connection to her imaginary friend showing up the very next day.

‘I’m sorry, Lyds, I’m so sorry. I…I just forgot. You’ve never talked about it since that first time. I just…forgot.’

I wish I could forget, Lydia thought as she stared down at the ring of bright red mushrooms under the dappled, sunlit trees. It was a beautiful place, perfect for a mother/daughter outing on a weekend when Lydia was away at a conference.

She wouldn’t let anyone else follow her into the circle. They promised to guard the forest, to track down the rest of the fairy rings and neutralize them if they could, bury them if they couldn’t. 

As she stepped inside the ring she had an arsenal in her bag, a charmed pendant around her neck, and the fury of a mother like a lightning storm around her. She had promised her wife she would come back with their little girl and she was going to do just that.

\---

When Lydia is seventy-six she no longer has a best friend. It wasn’t long and drawn out, but it wasn’t quick and easy either (like Allison, but that wasn’t easy, just quick, so quick it was like shattering glass, over and done and you’re left with the pieces on the floor cutting into your skin). It just was.

What they thought was the sniffles turned out to be pneumonia, and two weeks later Priya was gone. The nurses would talk about the way Lydia screamed for years to come.

Their daughter was somewhere travelling the world when she dies. She had come back long enough to say goodbye (that’s when Lydia had known it was coming, when Allison leaned down to kiss her mummy on the forehead and whisper a prayer that Lydia couldn’t understand, she knew). She hadn’t stayed though, couldn’t even hold still long enough to wait for the end. Her feet were restless, had been since Lydia brought her back from the fairy world thirty years ago; she never stayed anywhere long.

Scott and Kira and Stiles and Derek came out for the funeral. She had never realized how old they had all become until that day. It was a grand thing. Priya’s family was large, brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews, a few aunties still holding on. One brushed a bright line of turmeric on her forehead, the yellow a beautiful contrast with her warm, brown skin.

They all returned to the house and talked and ate and told stories. Lydia wanted to tell them to leave. To let her be alone. She had given up grand affairs long ago when she realized that they just made her more lonely.

She knew lonely well, remembers the decade she spent in the dark between sunlight and the warmth of Priya’s fire. (She wonders if she’ll see the light again in this life.)

A week after Priya’s death she placed the beautiful, carved wooden urn on the mantelpiece in the livingroom and walked away. She didn’t sell the house. Allison would still come by sometimes, needing a connection to something, a place to ground her wandering feet, if only for a night. But the whole house was Priya, her influence, her style, her brightness and strength. It hurt to look at it.

She went back to Beacon Hills for the first time since her mother’s death twenty years ago. It had changed so much, Lydia admitted, uttering those words they all say eventually, when the years behind them are so much more than the ones ahead.

The places that had hurt her were gone. The Hale house had been torn down, the rotted remains ripped up and a nature park laid over the top, complete with recycled benches and quaint little wooden boards telling the history of the reserve. There was no mention of werewolves, of burnings, of the lives that had been changed ruined lost forever in this place.

The highschool had been rebuilt several times in the last sixty-years. They kept tearing it down and starting again, as if Lydia’s screams, Stiles’ demons, Allison’s short life all pervaded the very essence of the place, as if they could never be wiped away; a blackness that hung over the foundation of the earth itself.

She drove passed her old home and saw a dog out front, a little boy throwing a stick, two men watching him happily from the porch. That was good. Her life in that house had been good. The bad things had only brushed the edges there, no time to seep in.

Scott and Kira invited her to dinner and she accepted. Stiles and Derek did too but she declined. Stiles tried to protest, that same stuttering breath, running words, busy hands she had always curled her nose up to in highschool. It made her smile now.

Derek’s broad, unwrinkled hand had stilled the fidgety movement that Stiles had never outgrown. He was older than all of them but didn’t look a day passed sixty. He would die like the rest of them, he had told her at the funeral when she commented on it, he wasn’t immortal; it just wouldn’t look the same on him.

When she left, when Scott and Stiles waved goodbye in her rearview mirror, she knew it was the last time she would ever see them or the wretched place again. Beacon Hills hadn’t been able to hurt her in fifty years, but it had never been a home to her. Just a starting place, one covered in barbed wire and a small sunburst of love, but she was always meant to leave it behind.

She travelled wherever she wanted, staying for weeks or just hours until something else caught her mind and moved her on. Sometimes she and Allison found each other, occasionally on purpose but usually by chance, by fate, their wandering hearts seeking each other out, the last parts of themselves they had left on earth.

She saw beautiful things and terrible things. She was, apparently, not done with werewolves.

She sent the ragged little family from New Zealand off to Scott’s children (he had gone peacefully in his bed at the age of 89 with Kira and Stiles watching over him). The young couple and their three tiny pups had been running from a bad alpha. Maybe some new blood in Beacon Hills would cleanse the darkness.

Fifteen years after Priya died Lydia came across a fairy ring in France, her daughter standing over it like an avenging angel while an all-too-familiar fae (raven hair and eyes like dappled sunlight in a forest, she would never forget that face) held a little blonde haired boy by the hand.

Allison turned the little boy’s tear streaked face away as the fairy prince clutched at his heart while it boiled away inside his chest. His blackening eyes asked, how?

She bent down close, long nails brushing over his ashen skin. ‘I am iron, forged in a fire you cannot begin to understand.’

She hugged her daughter goodbye that day (a kiss to the forehead and a sweetly whispered prayer in her ear and she knew she would not see her again), and thought about how lovely Italy was this time of year.

\---

She is ninety-six years old and there are two beautiful women waiting for her at the end of a bright, warm light. 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is an extremely belated birthday gift for Kelly ([oncetherewasapirate](http://oncetherewasapirate.tumblr.com/)). I wanted to give her a happy ending for Lydia. I hope it was worth the wait!


End file.
